The future of RFK Stadium once D.C. United moves to a new Buzzard Point stadium will be spotlighted by two community meetings designed to seek input on the topic.
When MLS’s D.C. United moves, the facility will lack a full-time tenant for the first time. D.C. United has played there since 1996, the Redskins played there from 1961 through 1997, and the Washington Nationals played there from 2005 to 2007. The future of RFK Stadium sans a major tenant is pretty bleak: the community is already foreseeing the desirable land site being used for something else. Events DC, which manages RFK Stadium, will hold a community meeting with sports-facility consultant Brailsford & Dunlavey to map out the future of the stadium area, which also includes D.C. Armory. A complicating factor: the site is owned by the National Park Service, so the site must be maintained as a public space. Otherwise, given the prime Capitol Hill location and easy freeway access, we’d see developers all over the site. From Hill Now:
However, Kirschner also stressed that the event is not only an informative meeting for community members, but also a chance for community members to voice their wishes directly to the company in charge of future plans for the site.
“We’ve always had an ongoing conversation with the neighbors and we definitely have an open-door policy with them,” he said. “We’re more than willing to take their suggestions because they’re the ones that are actually in this area.”
In the past, neighborhood groups have voiced support for putting sports fields at the property or using some of the parking lot space to set up a weekend market. Pete Kirschner, a spokesperson for Events DC, says that they hope to find a balance between these smaller projects and larger, more long-term plans for the site.
Nothing is imminent: the new D.C. United stadium is not a done deal, and given that we’re talking about a District of Columbia facility located on land owned by the National Park Service, the wheels of government will surely run slowly.
RFK Stadium opened in 1961 as the home of the Redskins and the American League’s Washington Senators, replacing the aging Griffith Stadium on the local sporting scene. Renamed RFK Stadium in 1969, the original District of Columbia Stadium (
Image courtesy Events DC.
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